Trial and Error
by EmaniaHilel
Summary: [OneShot] What are our two favorite birds to do when left with a WHOLE day off? Mind the rating. Nothing too explicit, but yeah. Just a snippet really. [per special request, updated with new content]
1. Sea of Blankets

**SPECIAL NOTE**: This story has it's first peice of FANART! **_GuardianKysra_** was kind enough to do a piccy for me! (squees) Okay, here's the link to it:**_ guardian - kysra . livejournal . com / 151278 . html_** (obviously, with the normal http colon and two forward slashes, but without the spaces) It's her journal on lj, so scroll through and you can't miss it. 

**A/N:** This is a one-shot, but it made them come out kind of OOC to my esteem, so I didn't originally post it on fanfiction net. I thought it was pretty cute, though so I didn't want to delete it entirely, so I put it up on my emsscraps journal. It got some pretty good responses on there, so I thought okay, why not? And I'm now posting it up here. Let me know what you guys think, k? It hasn't been beta'd at all. (except by me, but that hardly counts, does it?)

Oh yeah...this is rated a high PG-13 for some language and definitely for insinuated situations (although nothing too obvious is detailed...)

**A CHALLENGE:** I have jumped on the challenge bandwagon. You can find my challenge in my forums on fanfiction (dot) net. Here: http / www . fanfiction . Net / fr / 803999 / 12043 / 251226 / 1 / (mind the spaces)

_**Trial and Error  
**__**by Em**_

"_And how can I stand here with you / and not be moved by you/ Would you tell me / how could it be / any better than this?"  
__- _Lifehouse, Everything

Robin stilled the moment just before the knock came at his door. "What…" he cleared his throat and when next he spoke, his voice sounded, thankfully, natural. "What is it?"

"Yo, Rob," Cyborg's voice came through the door. "Is everything okay?"

Robin fought very hard to keep his voice neutral, but with the sensations currently running through his body it was becoming increasingly difficult. "Fine," he squeaked. He glared down at the owner of the hands that had just found his ticklish spot. She, however, was unperturbed and certainly wasn't appropriately apologetic.

"What did you say?" Cyborg asked.

"I said…" he paused as a small scuffle ensued as he tried to keep her hands from other sensitive ticklish spots on his person. "…that everything's fine!" he hurried out before he lost the battle and fell right off the bed and onto his ass on the floor with a hard thump.

"What happened?" Cyborg asked, clearly worried.

She was trying so bravely not to laugh aloud at his ungraceful plop that he found it very hard to keep a stern look on his face.

'Serves you right…' he mouthed, pointing at her as he stood up.

"Robin?"

"Everything's fine, Cyborg," he said, more naturally now that he had some distance from the intoxicating nearness of her. "I just fell on my ass, is all," he finished.

"_You_ did?" Cyborg asked, then paused. Robin knew his friend so well that he knew just what kind of look was on his face. "Are you sure you're…?"

"I was practicing some katas, Cyborg," Robin answered, going to the door. He glanced at her warningly before opening the door just enough so that Cyborg could see him.

"In your boxer shorts?" Cyborg asked, taking in the disheveled appearance of their leader.

"Sure, why not?" Robin asked. "I'm in the privacy of my room, who's it going to bother?"

Cyborg shrugged slowly. "I guess no one…"

Robin and Cyborg both heard something that could have been a noise behind him, but Robin was the only one who knew just what it was. She had learned, just the night before, how to twirl a basketball on her fingers and had been almost uncontrollably obsessed with figuring out how to do it whenever she wasn't…_otherwise_ engaged.

"Did you hear that?" Cyborg asked.

Robin managed to look confused. "Nope," he smiled at him, "So, what did you need?"

Cyborg scratched the top of his head and tried, unconsciously, to look passed Robin into his room, "You didn't hear that?"

"No," Robin insisted, "You were about to tell me why you came looking for me..."

Cyborg looked from the darkened bedroom to Robin's earnest face and frowned, "It sounded like a basketball hitting the floor..."

Robin internally cursed Cyborg's cybernetic hearing and just barely resisted glaring at her where he knew she must be grinning behind him. "Well, maybe the basketball fell off the table or something, but I didn't hear anything."

"Wouldn't it continue bouncing if it fell off the..."

"Cyborg?" Robin interrupted his train of thought, bringing Cyborg's attention back to him. "I'm standing in the hallway in my boxer shorts, so if you don't mind...what did you need?"

"Well," Cyborg suddenly looked sufficiently reprimanded. "You hadn't been out of your room all day, and we sort of got worried…"

Robin smiled at him. "Thanks, Cy, but I'm okay."

"Are you sure?" Cyborg asked., peering closer at him, "you're a little flushed."

Robin allowed Cyborg to press a palm to his forehead and read the temperature readout on his digitized forearm. "Just from the workout," Robin answered when the beep signaled the normal temperature. "Look," Robin told him. "I just felt like vegetating in my room all day…I've been doing nothing except what I want to…" he looked at him with his best convincing-nothing to see here-look. "I meant it when I said today would be an down day, see?"

"Okay," Cyborg said, still unconvinced, but unable to find anything overtly wrong. "We're going to the park," Cyborg told him, "Wanna come?"

"Nah," Robin answered casually. "I think I'll stick around here…I'm having a lazy day."

"Except for your workout," Cyborg mentioned.

Robin grinned brilliantly, just managing to keep from laughing. "Yeah…except for my workout."

"Alright," Cyborg said. "Why don't you come out and get some fresh air a little later, then? We'll probably be there for awhile."

Robin nodded. "Maybe."

"Okay," Cyborg started to look as if he didn't know what else to do, and Robin pictured that as the end of the conversation.

"See ya," Robin told him, closing the door before Cyborg could say anything else.

She was on her knees on the unmade bed, the mountains of white comforter around her like a cloud. 'You think he suspects?' she mouthed.

He shrugged. 'Don't know,' he mouthed back. He wagged his finger at her and let her know through his mischievous expression that he hadn't forgiven her teasing while he was trying to be serious so easily. He walked toward her slowly, like a tiger stalks its prey. She understood exactly what he was about to do and started to crawl backward on the bed in anticipation.

"Robin," she whispered warningly, barely above the sound of the rustle of the sheets as she moved.

He was almost at the bed when she froze. Instinctually, he froze as well and waited, listening for any clue as to what might have alerted her. She looked at the door before he could ask what was wrong.

"Hey, Rob?"

Robin lowered his head and exhaled. "Yeah?" he called.

"Have you seen Rae?"

His head snapped up and their eyes met so immediately, that she didn't notice her foot had gotten caught on the covers until her back hit the mattress and she had bounced a few times.

"How could I?" he asked, "I've been in my room all day?" He didn't exactly lie, but certainly hedged. The look on her face was so surprised that he would deliberately skirt lying that it made him smile.

"She's not in her room," Cyborg said.

"This is our day off, Cyborg," Robin countered, his eyes glued on her as her legs moved to untangle themselves from the bed. "She's free to do what she wants."

On the bed, she stopped to look at him, eyebrow raised a clearly interested challenge in the mischievous twinkle in her eye.

"But she didn't even take her communicator," Cyborg pressed.

Their eyes met again across the sea of blankets (he already had one leg on the mattress). She shrugged.

"Maybe she doesn't want to be reached," Robin answered. "Besides, if she's doing something else, how likely is it that she'd want to go to the park?" he couldn't help but ask.

Her eyes turned pensive at his words and he shot a question at her which she ignored.

"Right…" Cyborg answered, his tone betraying the disappointment there, "I guess I just figured she'd want to be asked," he finished. Robin turned to see the look approaching guilt on her face as she looked at the door. He knew she could feel whatever it was Cyborg was feeling on the other side of the door and he was glad when Cyborg spoke again,"If you hear from her…"

Robin met her eyes, "I'll tell her about the park," he assured.

"Alright…see ya."

"Bye."

Robin and she looked at each other across the tangled sheets that was almost unrecognizable as his bed and he could see her doubt, her guilt. She sighed. They'd had this discussion before. Whether or not to keep this thing between them secret. It had been her idea to keep it quiet between them. He would have shouted it from the rooftops, but he understood her need for privacy and ultimately, he enjoyed having a part of her that no one else knew about, that was just his and that he didn't have to explain or talk about with anyone. He settled on his haunchesat the edge of the bed, and watched, waiting. He gave her time to decide what to do without the nearness of her tempting him to sway her.And he waited because he knew that if he did, she might come to him. She didn't always come to him, but when she did, he loved to watch her as she crawled across the blankets.

Finally, the echo of Cyborg's footsteps long since faded, she moved slowly, carefully, towards him until their faces were inches apart. Her eyes were on him, but he could tell she was still thinking, still partly wondering... He searched her face for the answer he was practically aching for at this point.

She read the expression in his eyes and smiled. And then, the smile of understanding melted into something else...there was a smugness and a contentness to that smile that spoke volumes about just what she knew her affect was on him. That wouldn't do. He couldn't have her looking as if she were content at seeing the need in his eyes…not if she didn't need him just as much. He would, he knew, work on remedying that.

He kissed her with everything inside of him, transferring his need through her lips and into her, under her skin, until she was clutching him to her as hard as he was holding her to him. When it seemed she could take no more, she fell backward onto the mattress and he followed her, placing his hands on her head to soften her fall. And then, only then, did he break off the kiss and look at her.

"Cyborg says they're at the park if you want to…"

She cut him off by pulling his head down to her lips with a low growl. He gave in to the immediate need to taste her, before pulling away again.

"Will you let me finish my message?" he asked teasingly.

"I don't want to hear it," she told him authoritatively.

"Well," he said, keeping his mouth away from her and tracing, instead, his fingers down the side of her ribcage over the t-shirt she was wearing (_his_ t-shirt) and splaying his fingers across the curve of her hip right where the edge of the t-shirt finished and the tempting elastic band of her underwear began. "If you had brought your communicator maybe I wouldn't have to play messenger boy…"

She raised her hip under his hand and his fingers reflexively pressed against her flesh. She grinned. "Maybe I didn't want to be reached," she echoed. She didn't mention how she _couldn't_ bring her communicator into his room in case it rang and the others could trace the sound to his room. They would eventually talk about it, he knew it and she knew it, but not then. Not that afternoon. That afternoon was for them and they were going to take every bit of it they could.

"You mean you prefer to be here with me than at the park with them?" he asked with false innocence.

She pushed at him until he gave in and she flipped them over so that she was straddling his hips, sitting most of her weight on his legs. She kept her balance with hands pressing on his bare, muscular chest and lowered herself ever so slowly until just the tips of her hair touched his forehead and cheeks. "If you want me to tell you _exactly_ what I prefer, why don't you just ask?" she spoke, pressing her lips to his chest in something much more intimate than a kiss…almost as if she were tasting him.

"Because I rather try to figure it out…"

"Is that so?"

"So," he answered. Her body was a wonderland of softness and warmth and little places that made her react and squirm and sigh and laugh and he loved to take his time as he discovered them all. He let his hands gently trail across the curve of her thigh and slowly upward. She flinched instinctively pulling her body away from his hand buthis fingers played over the porcelain skin on her back right above her waist and she pushed into his touch with a soft exhale. He grinned knowingly and mentally cataloged the location of another one of her ticklish spots. He continued his exploration and trailed his hands a little higher, up under her t-shirt.

"How..." she started and inhaled sharply as he touched the sensitive spot behind her shoulders. He didn't remove the t-shirt...not yet. Her hands flexed and her fingernails left trails on his chest, but she didn't pull away. "...so?" she finished on an exhale.

He met her eyes as his hands caressed her upper back and slid around her shoulders, pushing the white cotton material up and over her shoulders where she helped him thread her arms through the sleeves until it pooled around her neck, hiding her perfect breasts from his view. But that was okay, because he was too busy watching her eyes to be bothered. "Through trial..." he watched as passion darkened her eyes until they were almost blue-black. She kept her hands utterly still on his chest, but her elbows buckled a little before she steadied herself. He loved watching her face as he brought her pleasure and her eyes turned that deep purple of the night sky and as welcoming and warm as crushed velvet. "Lots and lots of and trials."

Her laughter came deep and throaty, the way it came only when she was with him like this and she lowered herself until she was flush against him, "Well, good thing we've got all afternoon, then, isn't it?"

In answer, he kissed her.

_xxxxxxxxx_

**Notes:**

- Inspired by "Your Body Is A Wonderland" by John Mayer.

**Status:** Part XI for _It Only Takes A Moment_ should be up soon. Stay tuned.

**Dislcaimers:** Don't own 'em, still not making money off 'em, so _piss_ off.

Sooo...whaddya think? Should I delete it off here?


	2. One Month Earlier

**A/N:** This is my first response to the challenge I issued on my 'emsscraps' livejournal. (If you want to challenge me with something, go look up the challenge in my emsscraps journal and post a request onto there.

**_Kysra_** asked for one month before **_Trial and Error_**. I tried to make it a bit more risque, but it didn't work out that way. I already emailed it to her and she seems to have liked it. I hope the rest of you do too.

_**Trial and Error – One Month Earlier  
**__**by Em**_

"_I'm standing here until you make me move/ I'm hanging by a moment here with you..."_  
- Hanging By A Moment, Lifehouse

They were alone.

This, in and of itself, wasn't particularly strange. They _were_ the ones who usually preferred to stay home rather than to go out clubbing or to game rooms or even most movies, so they often were. Alone, that is.

Or, more specifically, alone..._together_.

"Go fish."

Robin raised a brow at Raven who offered him that soft turning of her lips he recognized as her smile.

"Wrong game, Rae."

"Oh?" she quirked a brow and shrugged, "Sorry," even though she obviously wasn't. "I'll take two," she answered, discarding two cards onto the pile.

"You know," Robin said, casually leaning on the table between them, "If you're having trouble getting the rules of the game straight..." he trailed off, holding his own two cards close to his chest.

"I can't have two?" she asked, with all the semblance of innocence. Robin knew better.

He pushed her cards back across the table toward her with a flick of his wrist. "Take your cards back, smarty pants," he said dismissively.

"Smarty pants?" she echoed, quirking a brow and a corner of her lips.

Robin would not be dissuaded from his near victory by his unfortunate choice in slang. He knew all her tricks. "Read it and weep, Rae," he tapped the card he had placed on the table, "The card says 'Draw Four'."

Raven's eyes went wide as if in sudden understanding, "Oh, so that means I have to---?"

Robin grinned, "If you need me to explain the rules of the game, _again_," he tried to goad her, "because you couldn't understand it the first time..."

"Well, pardon me for not understanding a game," Raven said monotonously. "Not all of us can pick up game strategy within the first few moments of game play, and I have always said I don't like games..."

"Bullshit," Robin coughed.

"Are you trying to insinuate that--"

"I'm not trying to insinuate anything," Robin interrupted frankly. "I'm _saying_ that you're trying to cheat." He ignored her near look of offense and continued, "I'm saying you have very cleverly noticed that I've only got two cards left and that you've got..." he trailed off and tried to count the stack of cards in her hands which she quickly hid behind her palm before he could, "...well, _a lot_," he said joyfully, "..._and_ I'm _saying_, bluntly I think, that you're trying to use a pretense of ignorance to cheat."

"I would never--"

"Bullshit!" Robin coughed, louder.

Raven narrowed her eyes at him, "Can I get you a glass of water, Robin?" she asked, her calm tone belying the threat in her eyes, "You seem to have a really nasty cough there."

Robin laughed, "No, no," he cleared his throat. "I think I'm okay now…" he looked at her, "If you're through with the bullshit that is."

Raven's expression became the epitome of monotonous casualness. "I think I'm offended."

"No, you're not," he countered, unrepentant, "You're just peeved that you got called on it," he said smugly.

Raven raised a brow, "You seem awful sure of yourself, Boy Blunder."

"Where you're concerned," he answered a determined kind of certainty in his voice. "Yes."

"You think you know me that well, do you?" Raven asked into his silence.

He shrugged and looked at his cards, "Yes."

"Why?" she questioned. "I don't know myself, not anymore, how could you say you know me?"

He felt the shift of mood like a palpable thing and knew the conversation was no longer about whether she was bluffing or not. "I just do." He cocked his head to the side, "Don't you know me?"

He read the answer in her eyes, but he hadn't really doubted it before. The realization of it might be surprising to Raven, but not to him.

"Well," she hedged, thinking, "But I'm an empath."

He laughed. "And I'm a detective, what does that have to do with anything?"

She looked, for a moment, frustrated. "I know you because I'm an empath, that's what it has to do with it," she answered.

He shook his head. "Let me ask you something," he leaned forward again, capturing her eyes and demanding honesty, "Do you know any of the others as well as you know me?"

She didn't have to answer that question, of course, and she probably wouldn't – not vocally anyway -- but at least asking it would make her to think about it. It wasn't that he was particularly looking to bring about these kinds of realization _today_ above any other day. He was perfectly content to wait and would be perfectly willing to drop the serious conversation at the first hint of discomfort on her part. She doubted each of her emotions, even now, when she was notably freer with them and so he knew that realizations with Raven had to be prodded little by little and very slowly. He was fine with that. He had patience, where it counted, anyway.

He wouldn't have taken the conversation in this direction. He didn't, though. She did. And he knew her enough to know it must have something she had been wondering about for quite awhile if she was speaking of it now. Raven never spoke of anything this serious without having given it quite a bit of thought on her own before hand.

So, although he was willing to wait, he was also ready to take this as far as she wanted to.

"I've been in your head," she offered as an excuse.

He exhaled and shrugged, busying his hands with organizing the discard pile they would use as the draw pile. He was very careful to offer an answer she could let drop if she wanted to. "That's part of it, I suppose."

"But not all of it?" she asked.

He looked at her. "Not as far as I'm concerned, no," he answered, smiling. "Why would you being in _my_ head explain how well I know _you_?" he challenged.

"I don't know," she answered.

He shrugged again and smiled, taking her answer as a sign that she was not ready to explore the conversation any further – at least, not just yet. He motioned the pile, "So, draw four."

She pulled four cards from the pile and looked at her hand for a moment, organizing her cards. He knew she was organizing them by color first, then by number, in descending order, with any wild cards at the end of the deck, on the right. He watched her organize and figured she had at least one wild card in the deck.

"I pick green," he declared.

She sighed and reached back for the draw pile.

"Why don't you use your wild card?" he asked.

She looked at him in momentary surprise, before lowering her hands to rest on the table, her head bowed for a moment. "Why do you know me so well, Robin?" she asked after a brief pause in silence.

He thought over his answer very carefully but waited until she looked up and met his eyes before speaking. "It's easy to know someone when you pay special attention to them day in and day out."

There was a pause, and he thought she might not pursue it any further, but then she spoke again.

"You pay special attention to me day in and day out?" she asked.

"I do."

"Why?"

Robin had been waiting for her to ask a question like this for years, so when he smiled, it was the kind of smile people rarely saw from him, but which Raven had seen at least three times before, _if_ she were counting. "Because I love you." And as if he hadn't noticed her surprised expression, he motioned the game before them, "Now, use your wild card so I can beat you already."

Raven blinked and put down her wild card, "Blue," Raven spoke as if in a daze.

Robin grinned and put down his blue skip card and when she realized that she could not put down a card of her own but had to wait for him to go again, he put down his final card, a green skip, with a bit of a flourish. "Uno," he called, smiling at her.

"You win," Raven said in her customary monotone, lowering her pile of cards onto the table and standing up. Robin watched her start to walk away and wondered whether he had made a mistake after all. He looked up at her as she approached him, and there was a moment when he was certain she would walk right by without even looking at him, but even when she turned her gaze on his and their eyes met, he couldn't have anticipated that she would stop, lean down and kiss him.

He responded of course, Robin was never an idiot, even when surprised, and when they came up for air, Robin's chair had been pushed away from the table and Raven had somehow ended up half on his lap and half straddling him, her hands gripping onto his shoulders.

They looked at each other, both downright flabbergasted, Robin that she had kissed him at all and Raven that what she had intended, in her naiveté, to be just a press of lips had ended in such blatant impropriety and Robin that she had kissed him at all. (He knew exactly how kissing her would end up if he had any say in the matter.)

She recovered quicker than he did. After all, she had kissed him and she was notoriously better at controlling herself than most anyone in the world. When she smiled at him, there was an edge of something altogether sinful about it. "You didn't know I was going to do that, did you?"

Robin had to admit that he didn't, but he could only shake his head to do so. And just when the shock was starting to wear off and he was more than willing to explore the situation a little more, Raven shifted and somehow managed to raise herself from his lap and disentangle herself from his arms quite gracefully. She was back on her path toward the elevators before he could think of one civilized thing to do to stop her.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxx_

**A/N:** So, what'd ya think? I've got ideas in my head for **_Guyute24's_** request (one month after **_Enough_** and **_Aileene's_** request (one month after **_Laid Bare_**).

**SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:** If you like **_Kysra_**'s work, she did this same challenge on her livejournal. You can find it here (take out the spaces): http :// guardian – kysra . livejournal . com / 191487 . html She's only had me ask her for something from the Teen Titan universe, so why don't you guys go and ask her for something else, huh?


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